


Once Lost; Always

by MistyDay



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 10:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1815670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyDay/pseuds/MistyDay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Tony's advice that leads Bucky to try a new hobby. It's Steve's life that changes. (aka: The one where Bucky takes up playing piano and guitar and violin; learns a lot about himself in the process.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Lost; Always

He comes back to Steve one day, eyes blank and hair dripping wet and teeth chattering. He's just on the doorstep like he's come straight off the subway; like he's any other person in the world, like Steve hadn't spent the last four months trekking through Europe with Sam looking for him.

"I wish I knew you," Bucky says, "I know I did, once."

And Steve doesn't even hesitate, just opens the door wider and steps aside.

\----

Bucky makes him promise not to forget that he's not the James Buchanan Barnes Steve once knew. He pleads, sobs, pulls at his hair, scratches at his arms.

He's in pain; he's begging for his life. Steve hates to see him this way; he promises and promises and promises.

It's the first time Steve's not sure he can keep a promise.

\-----

And sometimes he just plays and plays and plays. 

\----

Steve likes to watch him as the sun sets on Avenger tower; a bright, dying sun illuminating his figure like the forgotten specter he is. Bucky looks the most like himself in those moments, even with the long hair and the metal arm and the circles around his eyes. He's barely even concentrating on the notes, the keys; but he's lost in the music and the sounds and Steve can see him changing, slowly, morphing into someone he was, someone he is, someone he will be one day. It's not easy, it never was. Steve Rogers mourns the Bucky Barnes he once knew; but revels in the man he has in front of him now. 

\---

It starts after Tony replaces the arm with something much lighter; more flexible and versatile - it even gives him limited feeling in his biceps, his wrists, the tips of his fingers.

"Get a hobby or something," He says, as he shoos Bucky and Steve from his lab, "The more you use the arm, the better your dexterity will be. Take up cooking; knit. Learn how to re-create the Cups song from _Pitch Perfect_. I don't really care, just know it won't get better if you don't work with it."

Neither of them say anything to that, but they both understand Steve's not just talking about the arm. 

\---

Rewinding back and back and back -

Bucky was never a musician, never a singer. He smiled like the cheshire cat; could keep beat and hum along; was a pretty great dresser with the little money they had coming in and loved loved loved to dance. He liked to drum along the top of their shared dresser to annoy Steve when he was trying to draw. When they were out on leave during the war, he'd get smashed with the other Commandos and sing Irish folk songs off-key loudly and obnoxiously like the best of them. 

He never showed any interest in instruments, loved music but didn't care to pick up anything that could make noise unless it was a rifle.

That changes 70 something years later, when life's taken them apart and put them back together again.

The first time Steve walks in on him tinkering with Tony's piano he doesn't give it much thought because he's lost in trying to find the man he once knew in the mis-mash jumble of the Winter Soldier he knew now. It's the third time, when Bucky's playing a soft melody, unfamiliar to Steve, that he realizes. 

He's taken Tony's advice and gotten himself a hobby.

\--

He only tries to talk to Bucky about it once, when they're sitting side by side in the gym watching Natasha pin Sam for the fourth time.

"So, music, huh?" He says, and then feels silly, stupid. Bucky doesn't really reply, not until Sam cries "uncle" and lets himself be tagged out for Clint's turn in the ring.

"Can I get a guitar?"

\---

The thing about super soldiers with power running in their veins that normal humans don't have is that they're bigger, faster, stronger. Bucky's smart, has always been smart, but between whatever he was experimented on with and with the medicine Dr. Banner's been feeding to him intravenously once a week to try to heal the scarring on his brain from the wipes, he's quicker and smarter then he's ever been. He starts off tinkering on the piano, but by the end of two weeks, is playing beautiful, intricate pieces. He can listen to a pop song on the radio and play it note for note hours later. He starts with the piano and then there's a guitar and violin, because Steve needs to help, help help and couldn't deny Bucky even the world. He doesn't want to stop giving Bucky what he wants. 

Bucky spent so so so many years not having what he wants.

Steve listens, because he knows that's what Bucky wants him to do. He sits and drifts, Bucky's music, whether original or covers, turns into a soundtrack to the life he had, to the one he's lost, to the one he's got in front of him. Sometimes he can't help but cry a little. Other times he laughs, because Bucky plinks out the theme songs to 90's video games and 60's television jingles because he wants to hear the smile in Steve's voice.

The others are around, too, and once Tony stays for Bucky's version of Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 21 and then has nothing to say, he's so shocked.

The next day he catches Steve buttering toast in the kitchen.

"Guess he took my advice, huh?"

Steve just cocks an eyebrow.

 

\---

Bucky is quiet a lot, reserved. He doesn't speak often, and when he does, it's usually staccato sentences and replies to questions. Steve lets him express himself through the music instead, can tell Bucky's moods through what he's playing that day; what instrument he chooses. It's soft and melancholy one Wednesday, and Steve, for the first time, sits beside Bucky on the piano bench, let's himself be close, to watch Bucky's hands - always strong, with long thin fingers on his real hand, and brushed metal on his other. Steve remembers those hands from the times he'd been tugged out of fights; from when he was tucked into bed after coughing all day. He remembers handshakes and hugs and a hand up from when he'd been pushed to the ground. He watches those hands, the tilt of Bucky's head, the lean of his shoulders. His hair curtains his face, the sun sets around them. Steve Rogers mourns. Bucky Barnes is reborn; not the man he once was, not the man HYDRA made him out to be, but a part of both - a mix of here and there, of old and new.

\--

Steve Rogers is neither here nor there. He's not the man he once was, he's not the man SHIELD necessarily wanted him to be. He's a ghost, just like Bucky is in some ways. History has made them both out to be heroes. They're just men, really. 

Bucky clings to the life that music gives him now, the chords and the notes and the sad mournful moans of the strings across the violin, or the plucky happy upbeat tempo of a jazz number from the 40's on Tony's old piano.

Steve asks him once what he's thinking about when he plays.

"James Barnes," Bucky says honestly, his eyes sad, "And the man he was, and the man I am."

Steve's speechless, truly, until Bucky leans back down to tune the acoustic Steve had bought him months ago now; it's already showing signs of use. He's just had to re-string two strings after breaking them when he'd been playing "Guess the Song" with Tony and Natasha and Clint. 

Steve can't help but say, "But you are James Barnes," even though he knows that's not true; not really.

Bucky reaches out and taps Steve's chin with his now-calloused real fingertips.

"Oh, Stevie, you know that ain't true. Don't go back on your promises."

His smirk, his eyes, the accent - Steve can't help but almost, sort of, wish he was wrong, wants to tell Bucky he's wrong, because why does he seem so much like his Bucky? Why does he smirk like him? Laugh like him? Have such charm and the same quick temper?

But Bucky turns his attention back to the guitar and the moment is lost, like many others, and Steve keeps on moving, moving, moving forward.

\----

There's always music, but they're Heroes, they're Machines, they're Soldiers. In between nights in, Steve and Bucky are also Captain America and The Winter Soldier. Steve is always Captain America, always sees himself as Captain America, but most of the time he can't understand how the man that played the Addams Family theme song to him last night with a smile on his lips can possibly be The Winter Soldier; be the man that nearly killed him on the helicarrier that day. Bucky's so soft these days, so sweet and quiet, even when his wicked sense of humor surprises them all; even when he's pinning Clint down by his throat in the gym. The Winter Soldier - he can't possibly be the same man who likes to come up with silly songs about Natasha's hair straightening skills or Clint's brooding. He can't even possibly be the man who played "My Heart will Go On" while Tony chased Steve around trying to get him to recreate the iconic "flying" scene. 

He is, though, and Steve's having a hard time forgetting these days.

\----

"I don't miss him that much anymore," Steve says one day, later on, when life has moved forward more and more and the day Bucky's returned to him is officially The Past now. 

"You should," Bucky says softly, with the kind of roguish smile that would have been James Buchanan Barnes, once, a long time ago.

"I've got you," Steve says honestly, "And that's enough."

Bucky closes the lid to the piano, looks out the window beyond, takes in New York City the way it is now, and Steve knows he's trying so so so hard to remember as it once was.

"It'll have to be." He finally replies.

\---

Bucky crawls into his bed, like he's done a long long time ago, and how he does these days only sometimes. He presses his real hand to spot between Steve's shoulder blades, high on his back. He's quiet, but Steve can hear when Bucky can match his breathing to his own. He wonders what Steve Rogers of The Past would have thought of all this. It seems so long ago, now, that Steve sometimes thinks he's forgotten even himself.

One day they fall apart at the seams- It's a Bad Day, when they nearly lose Sam and Natasha in one go.

That day is the day when Everything Changes, because, after crawling into his bed shaking like a leaf, Bucky leans in and kisses him, hard and imperfect and with too much teeth.

"Steve," He says, eyes aglow in the dark room. Steve gives in, falls apart, because he has no choice anymore. He's at Bucky's mercy, no matter what version of Bucky he's faced with now; the man that's a bit of a Frankenstein, both literally and figuratively. He kisses like Bucky once kissed the dames at the dance halls, flirty and sweet, but his grip is Winter Solider, tight and unforgiving. He's got Steve falling apart in his arms in moments, his fingers playing Steve's body just like he's played the piano, the guitar, the violin. 

That night changes everything and nothing; reminds Steve of days where he'd long to be held by Bucky as a scrawny twenty-something in the 40's, who'd feared his own emotions and worried he'd be rejected by the best man he'd ever known. It reminds Steve that Bucky's right in saying he's not the same man, even if he has some of the memories, even if he looks at Steve the same way sometimes. It reminds Steve that this new world they've found themselves in is lovely and horrible and unforgiving and the best thing that could have ever happened to either of them.

Steve holds on tight to Bucky; grasps his shoulders and holds him tight, tight, tight - pleads Bucky to never ever ever leave him alone again, please. _Please._

Bucky promises, much like Steve had promised not so long ago, and they both know that's the best they can do for now.

\----

Steve watches him play, sun setting around him, the dying light making Bucky seem brighter then he's ever been. He's not sure what he believes in anymore, but this day he's so thankful for what he has, what he's been given, what he had, and what he's gotten back.


End file.
